The historians therefore must not forget the name of Mr,.
and Mrs. John Heatheote. As a small boy and later—for age did not diminish his interest in games—I played a great deal of lawn tennis with him, and remember very vividly all the changes in the shape of the court, in the balls, in the racquets and in the style of play. No figure in the gallery of players is more vivid than Mr. John Heathcote's, as he stood with the head of his crooked racquet well above his steely wrist, cutting the ball with the sharpest possible flick of the wrist at the last moment. It was a thing to wonder at if the ball topped the net by more than a margin of two or three inches, and his son played even nearer. His instinct to cut the ball was almost tropistic. He played a little golf in later life and was a mar- vellously good putter. We all averred—I think, with perfect accuracy—that he cut the ball with his putter. Certainly the ball seemed to wriggle into the hole (on his garden putting links) as if there was some inherent attraction between the two. It is possible (since we are discussing the evolution of game balls) that you could do this with the old gutty, which may be compared with the court tennis ball, and could not do it with the more flighty and frolicsome ball now in favour. It may be that the Haskell ball was as potent a popularizer of' golf as the covered tennis ball of lawn tennis. The history of balls in general is a theme that no one, I think, has treated worthily. The golf ball is perhaps the most interesting of all, for in days when wooden knots were used each ball had its individuality. There were famous " conkers " in those early days at St. Andrews. What sort of ball did Nausieaa and her maidens catch ? Odysseus would certainly have improved it if he had stayed longer at her father's house.
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